The Trouble with Adultery
by 100 Silver Wings
Summary: ...is getting caught. Besides that, it's actually pretty nifty. ONESHOT


_Hey there. I've got some angsty-ass Harley Joker Ivy triangle crud for you. Set in the very early days of Arkham City, so before the actual game begins. Hopefully this makes up for my horrendous dry-spell? It doesn't? Yeah, I agree. But I do have a multi-chapter story tentatively planned for the future..._

_Enjoy!_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING. _

Don't stop.

Or…or maybe do.

Harleen Quinzel—or Harley Quinn, depends who's asking—didn't quite know anymore.

Oh, yes, she was quite used to not knowing a lot of things a lot of the time. But this…this was different! It truly was. The things she tended not to know, she only didn't know because somebody was withholding a truth or two or a dozen from her. Despite the customary assumption that instead of a brain she had bubblegum and glitter, she was quite intelligent. Maybe she didn't act like it at all times. Maybe the derogatory rumors were a tad bit her fault. Maybe she was a genius.

But don't (or do) stop.

Depends who's asking.

Ivy said to stop.

Joker said to stop.

But what about Harley? What did Harley say? Huh.

Harley said I don't know. And she actually meant it. As in, she often said she didn't know, but this time she was in full realization that she hadn't a clue. She _knew_ that she didn't know and that is not nearly as comforting as one might think.

"Harley. Harley! Look at me, okay? And keep your ears open too; this is important." That's how Ivy started. Snapped her fingers to get attention, and twitched her hip to keep it. "I've said this a million times, and I will say it a million more: just stop it. I'm serious about this, Harley. Leave the creep! Stay here with me, and I promise, I will keep you safe. I'd never hurt you."

"You smell like flowers." That's how Joker started. In a deadpan. And he didn't give a damn about getting or keeping her attention, because the Joker doesn't give a damn about anything. Regardless, she knew to listen up. She knew to have the shame to blush and pull her scarf tighter over the hickey. "You _smell_ like _flowers_." The Joker was a man of few words. He would roll up off his chair like a thunderhead, a brewing storm of pale skin stretch tight over muscle and bone. "I know what that means. I know where you've been. Dearest Harley, apple of my eye, center of my universe…" They were compliments laced with arsenic. She squirmed as he raised his hand. "Love…of my…life…" He spat it out like a fish bone. Tendons in his neck were popping. How funny; he had scrounged up a few measly damns to give tonight. From that point onwards, not a word was needed.

Thank goodness they had the room soundproofed. If guards heard screams, they got curious enough to investigate. Had they poked their heads in, it could have gotten very awkward.

So perhaps that was the reason she wore the clown makeup.

Thick white cream covers bruises nicely.

Cream covers a lot of things nicely.

But Ivy always had a way to wipe away anything in her path. That's when her eyes would flash like the clock striking midnight.

Currently, Harley was trapped between the 'don't' and the 'stop'. It was a limbo, her own special Twilight Zone, though the screenwriters were noticeably crappy at their jobs. She was trapped down at the docks, on the soggy wood piers. At the end of the dock, she looked down at the black water, and she thought about jumping in. That would certainly solve a lot of her troubles.

Instead, she fell onto her back, amongst the seagull shit and tangled fishline and she laughed in a way that made it sound like she was being viciously kicked the whole time. She didn't often laugh like this, because clowns are regular old dopamine banks. Clowns don't do 'real world' or other such silliness. She was a clown. Had been for years. She should know by now how to stay happy. She should know these things!

They had thought, everybody had thought, that Arkham City was going to solve a lot of problems. Herself included. From what she had heard, Ivy had stopped being Ivy and had started being Pamela Isley once more. She had converted to the side of angels. _She__wouldn__'__t__be__in__the__City_. But Harley would, and Joker would, and sniper towers and barbed wire and solid concrete walls would separate them. She wouldn't have to choose ever again, because all choice would be taken from her. She belonged wholly and completely to Joker. She might as well be branded like a steer in the stockyard.

Then something went wrong and Pamela Isley once again slunk away and Ivy—Poison Ivy—was back in all her thoroughly condemnable glory. In no time, she was in Arkham. In no time, Harley was on her doorstep, in her threshold, sucking in that heavy, sweet air, and then in the halls, in the bedroom, and it was just like old times. When she had to go, had to wind her way back to Joker, she was so sick.

"She hasn't even been in here for twenty four hours and you're already over at her place, jumping her bones I'd bet!" Joker had crowed, kissing the blood off her mouth after the first round. He was sneering. "Ew, Harley, you sicko! Didn't your mother ever tell you that girls don't do that to other girls?" He giggled, which turned into a cough—he was getting worse—and then he drove his knee into her stomach. "Stupid whore."

During the entire thing, she didn't say a word. She could have tried to reason that the two of them hadn't seen each other in almost a year, that they were merely friends and had spent the time in her living room or something, chatting and catching up. Or whatever it is that normal women do these days. Joker didn't take too kindly to her silence.

Now, out under the starless sky, she swung to her feet. She was off to burn a bridge and fill her head with stupid ideas that this was for the best.

Off to Ivy's place. Across crinkled highway.

She waved hello to several guards along the way.

And she might have killed one or two. But only the ones with the Penguin insignia on their chests.

In front of the partially submerged building in the bay, vines coiling around it like pythons, she stopped. She shrugged off her nice leather jacket and laid it over the thick vine that spanned from the highway to the building: their only physical link. Then she took the lighter from its pocket and, shivering, lit it on fire, breaking the thing open and pouring the little fluid there was on the vine. She watched it burn, wrinkling her nose at the stench that resulted from it, and crying a little when the vine squirmed and crying even more when Ivy rushed out of the front door, screaming and clawing at her arms in pain.

"Agh! What're you doing? Where are you?" She yelled, looking around wildly. Then she stopped, recognizing the sad girl below her, sending their only connection up in flames. "Harley! Are you crazy?"

"You know it." Harley yelled back, trying to keep the sniffles out of her voice. "I'm sorry, Red, it's nothing personal." Then she turned and walked off, too horrified to give her friend a proper farewell. Ivy yelled after her, betrayed and already sad.

They never got in a true goodbye.

"Oh, God." She groaned. Somebody had to leave the equation, and they just had, but she still couldn't stop thinking about so many things that could have been.


End file.
